How to Focus as an Aspiring Programmer? (Even in the Presence of Myriads of Online Resources)

Any aspiring programmer should focus on projects, not on online resources.

As a coder, you must stay in it for the long term.

If you are in it on the long-term, you are effectively on the path on exponential improvement (for a certain time):

However, this is a very long process. Because of that, you likely decide one day that coding is not for you. Maybe you are frustrated, don’t see the results you expect, or something else seems to be more exciting.

Avoid this at all costs (or you won’t master a single thing in life). You need to stay committed to coding. And how do you do this?

You focus on practical projects that deliver positive results to real people. They will give you positive reinforcements and social rewards. You will become addicted to delivering real value. This is exactly what happened when I programmed my online Python learning app Finxter.com. People loved it and I was hooked.

That’s why you shouldn’t focus too much on resources, languages, technologies, or frameworks. Focus on projects. Finish the projects with the things you already know. Over time, you level your skills up in various fields such as HTML/CSS, Python, data science, machine learning, databases, scripting, and others. Most projects are interdisciplinary by nature.

In short: focus by finding practical projects. Don’t ponder too long about the right online resource.

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